This invention relates to an interactive tool for creating and displaying visual representations of musical works.
There are numerous ways to convey musical content in media other than by sound recordings. Sheet music, including musical scores, conveys to a performer musical qualities such as tempo, pitch, duration, volume, and articulation. For example, the tempo and mood is indicated by separating the notes into measures and stating a tempo by phrases such as adagio, andante cantabile, presto, rallendo etc.
The pitch of individual notes is indicated by their position on a staff of five lines preceded by a clef (e.g. treble, bass, alto, etc.) and a key signature. The duration of a note is indicated by whether it is hollow or solid, by dependent flags and by its font size if it is a grace note.
Volume is indicated by combining abbreviations for forte (louder) and piano (softer) and by indicating swells (crescendos) and diminuendos by elongated wedges written below the notes.
Articulation is indicated by dots for staccato, bars for legato, curved lines for slurs, and by comments. In addition there are specialized notations for each instrument such as guitar fingerings written at chord transitions, pedal instructions for keyboard instruments, etc.
Since score reading requires a long time to learn, there have been attempts to provide information in connection with scores by using visual means.
The use of colors to indicate notes is the most common: U.S. Pat. No. 1,085,603 (Grant) discloses a method of writing music using different colors to represent the different tones of a vocal scale (this reference, and all others cited in this application are herein incorporated by reference); U.S. Pat. No. 3,680,428 (Buckrucker et al.) discloses a color coded music notation wherein a series of colored disks having different shading characteristics represent different notes; U.S. Pat. No. 5,775,915 (Quinn) discloses a music notation wherein different colors are used to represent the key and also whether the note is a sharp or flat; U.S. Pat. No. 6,127,616 (Yu) discloses a method of representing musical notes using colors and shading; U.S. Pat. No. 6,660,921 (Deverich) discloses a method for teaching a stringed instrument using colored fingering numbers; U.S. patent application No. 2004/0007118 (Holcombe) discloses a method of music notation using colors to represent the notes of a scale.
In general musical scores are intended to guide a performer, but require much interpretation in order to produce the intended musical content. Although they are a remarkably successful notation scheme, musical scores require long familiarity before being able to be converted into quality musical sound. And, even sophisticated musicians would have trouble reading a piece of sheet music or a score and getting a sense of the ultimate musical experience the way one can read words on a page and get the sense, without hearing them, of what they would sound like aloud. Thus, with some notable exceptions, composers usually work on an instrument and not by writing out what one expects to hear.
With the advent of computer displays there have been several attempts to convey graphically certain aspects of music. The web page http://www.kunstderfuge.com/theory/malinowski.htm, downloaded Jul. 26, 2006, discusses a Musical Animation Machine (MAM) providing a visual display that represents a musical performance. It is intended to be a musical score for listeners rather than a musical notation to serve the needs of composers, performers, and conductors. It uses colored bars to represent the notes of a piece. The vertical placement of each bar indicates the pitch of its note. The horizontal placement indicates its timing relative to the other notes of the piece, and the length of the bar shows its duration. These bars scroll across the screen as the piece plays. When a bar reaches the center of the screen, it brightens as its corresponding note sounds. The center of the screen is always the “now” point. The notes for different instruments are alt on the same “staff”, with the different instruments indicated by color. The MAM notation can be colored to highlight thematic units, instrumentation, harmony, or dynamics. Despite its use of colors and graphics, the MAM adheres closely to the standard layout of a musical score. The graphics convey little feel for the music for someone unaccustomed to interpreting standard scores.
PCT publication WO 97/46991, entitled “Method and System for Providing Visual Representation of Music” displays graphic representations of the chords, notes and lyrics of a song correlated with the time of performance to facilitate a musician's ability to learn to play it on an instrument. U.S. Pat. No. 6,717,042 entitled “Dance Visualization of Music” discloses apparatus to analyze samples of a received stream of music and determine a music type. It then displays dance movements for the stream of music in accord with the type. U.S. Pat. No. 6,686,529 entitled “Method and Apparatus for Selecting Harmonic Color Using Harmonics, and Method and Apparatus for Converting Sound to Color or Color to Sound”, discloses an apparatus to convert sound into a color image by selecting a color based on the harmonics. U.S. Pat. No. 6,353,170 entitled “Method and System for Composing Electronic Music and Generating Graphical Information” discloses a system to allow a user to interactively arrange music samples that are looped to create a musical work. The user creates a video of an animated character that dances to the rhythm and beat by selection from several video clips, which may then be edited. In the same vein is U.S. Pat. No. 5,801,694.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,225,545 entitled “Musical Image Display Apparatus and Method Storage Medium Therefor” discloses a display where a drawing pattern is read from a data base corresponding to musical instruments. The drawing pattern is modified according to performance information. U.S. Pat. No. 6,140,565 entitled “Method of Visualizing Music System by Combination of Scenery Picture and Player Icons” discloses a method for displaying a scenery setting matching an environment in which the music should be played. It provides an icon corresponding to the timbre of the performance. U.S. Pat. No. 5,646,361 entitled “Laser Emitting Visual Display for a Music System” describes a visual display formed by lasers responding to the frequency and volumes of music. In the same vein is U.S. Pat. No. 6,361,188.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,286,908 entitled “Multi-Media System Including Bi-Directional Music-To-Graphic Display Interface” describes a music controlled graphic interface having a lookup table of video/graphic data and using digital musical information as an index into the table. Alternatively an algorithm can calculate video data in real time corresponding to the digital musical information. U.S. Pat. No. 5,275,082 entitled “Visual Music Conducting Device” displays a simulation of the movement of a conductor's baton in response to electronic timing signals representative of the tempo of a piece of music.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,191,319 entitled “Method and Apparatus for Visual Portrayal of Music” discloses a visual color display that portrays music. The audio signal amplitude causes the display brightness to vary. The audio signal frequency content causes the color of the display to vary. Preselected light colors are assigned to frequency bands. A display using two adjacent light sources is presented on a globe to produce attractive color blending. U.S. Pat. No. 5,048,390 entitled “Tone Visualizing Apparatus” discloses a detector for characteristics of an audio signal such as envelope, chord, spectrum components, number of zero-cross points and energy. These are turned into display parameters such as size, brightness or color so that the impression of the image is matched with that of the audio tone.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,005,459 entitled “Musical tone Visualizing Apparatus Which Displays an Image of an Animated Object in Accordance With a Musical Performance” discloses an apparatus that stores images of players or musical instruments. These are moved in response to performance of an electronic musical instrument. That image may be selectively enlarged whose tone volume is largest during the performance. U.S. Pat. No. 4,713,658 entitled “Apparatus for Providing a Visual Interpretation of an Audio Signal” describes an apparatus for analyzing a musical signal electronically into frequency or amplitude characteristics. Each characteristic controls a motor operating a rotatable indicator. The amplitude component rotates the whole indicator display comprising three indicator sets for bass, treble and mid-range. The indicator sets may be subdivided within further frequency limits.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,081,829 entitled “Audio Activated Video Display” assigned to Atari, Inc. discloses an apparatus that presents images associated with separate stereo channels, Color is derived based on the zero crossing rate of each channel. Each channel has its own color associated with it. Objects may be solid, or rings, or one may be subtracted from the other. The different arrays may be selected automatically in a random manner.
Thus there have been many efforts at providing a visual representation of music. They fall into a mainly two categories. First, there are those that adhere closely to the presentation of a musical score. These either use static graphics to make the score more readable, or they use time varying graphics to indicate which notes are being sounded as the piece plays and to provide some information about the volume of the notes. Second, there are those that present images that entertain with pleasing visual patterns responding to the music but with no discernable informative intention regarding the structure of the music. For example, such systems might display the image of a dancer or musician playing instruments.
Another representation of music, in a non-visual form, is the Musical Instrument Data Interface (MIDI) system, which provides a binary code for transmitting a musical performance. For example, a MIDI code for a piano performance digitizes which key was struck, how hard it was struck, and how long it was sustained, etc. The MIDI code is intended to be converted back into sound by a code interpreter, which for example could produce a piano's sound emulating the audio effect of the struck key. Typically the corresponding sound is a prestored sampled sound. Thus the MIDI code could be sounded on any instrument whose sound has been sampled. For example, playing on a MIDI keyboard could allow the simulation of an organ, a trumpet, a drum, etc. The reproduced sounds do not have to correspond to any conventional instrument and may be produced electronically as opposed to sampled. Although MIDI code is somewhat successful in digitizing performance information it is not humanly readable and is designed for interpretation throughout the use of some sound production system.
Yet another successful medium for capturing sound in another medium is the sampling system used in digital recording on tape, CDs or DVDs. Since sound produced on a speaker is merely the result of electrical currents sent to the speaker, the medium records those currents in detail. In digital recording, the music is chopped up into extremely small time intervals and a voltage level is recorded (or sampled) for each interval. Only a finite number of voltage levels are recorded, which gives the recording its digital quality. Although digital recording is only an approximation to the musical sound, if the frequency range is bounded, the sampling rate is high enough, and the number of quantized levels is sufficient, the loss due to the digital approximation cannot be heard. Such digital recording became practical with the development of fast inexpensive electronics and, for the CD and DVD, the development of optical recording techniques employing lasers. Again, this technology is for reproducing sound and not for providing human readable or visual formats.
There is a huge market for musical performance, and much of its audience is uninterested in or incapable of performing what they hear. Such people have no interest in learning to read sheet music because it is difficult to achieve and is unrelated to listening to the music. Some software programs try to fill this need by offering the user the ability to assemble sound clips into a piece of music. Some of these programs have graphical interfaces in which aspects of sound clips are displayed as .wav files (a standard way of representing digitally sampled files on a computer). In those representations, the amplitude and duration of the sound are represented as a wave. Utilities are provided for attaching those waves to each other to play them in sequence, or attaching them on parallel lines to play several simultaneously, to repeat entire sections, and to modify volumes, pitch and durations. However the formats are not capable of indicating detailed musical characteristics and do not give a pictorial sense of the artistic sonic elements of the musical composition other than perhaps tempo and volume.
Importantly, it is recognized that music is organized according to a hierarchical structure and can be understood as a hierarchical event. At the lowest level, the music is comprised of individual notes that have a pitch (e.g., middle-C), a duration (e.g., a quarter note), and a timbre (harmonics at varying amplitudes that serve to distinguish, e.g., a violin from a flute). Other lower-level aspects might include the amplitude (volume) envelope or how the harmonic amplitudes vary over time. At a higher level, by way of example, the middle-C can be viewed as the third of an A-flat chord, or it could be serving as a pitch center, tonal center or the like. At an even higher level, the middle-C can be viewed as the second note of a particular motif. These levels can further incorporate higher-level structures as well: a motif within a phrase, and this, within a movement; aspects such as melodies and themes are encompassed at these higher levels. None of the existing notation systems capture the substance hierarchical structure of the music in a comprehensive manner.
What is needed is a way to create and convey visually to a listener the sense of a musical experience on a number of levels in the hierarchical structure, whether or not accompanied by the sound. What is further needed is a way to enable musical composition or the modification of existing music whether or not accompanied by the sound. Finally, what is needed is a tool that permits an artist to interact with visual display elements in a manner that both respects the form at various levels in the hierarchy while at the same time permitting artistic freedom of expression.